English Translations 71
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ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 71 Gaelic and Welsh Celtic languages were once spoken throughout Britain. Virtually all speakers in the UK today are bilingual to some degree. Gàidhlig / Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language closely related to Irish Gaelic. It was introduced by migrants from Ireland and by the sixth century was spoken virtually throughout Scotland, only to be gradually pushed back by Scots (Scottish English) from the middle ages onwards. Its position today is more vulnerable than that of Welsh. Gaelic speakers represent less than 2% of the Scottish population of 5m. The biggest Gaelic-speaking communities are in the Western Isles (in the 2001 census 72% of the population claimed to understand, speak, read or write Gaelic) and the Highlands (9%), but there are also significant minorities in the major cities (Glasgow 1.8%, Edinburgh 1.4%, Aberdeen 1.2%). The census showed an overall fall of 11% since 1991 to 58,650, partly due to the death of many elderly speakers. However, while the number of mother-tongue speakers still gives cause for alarm, the rate of the language’s decline has been slowed and, some argue, potentially reversed by the response to policies to secure its position, many of them implemented relatively recently. These include funding for Gaelic medium education and broadcasting. There are fifty primary and a dozen secondary schools offering Gaelic medium education, plus a growing urban demand outside the Gaelic heartlands. The place of the Gaelic medium higher education college Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on the Isle of Skye is central to plans to secure the language’s future, and the annual Gaelic cultural festival, The Royal National Mod / Am Mòd Nàiseanta Rioghail, plays a significant role. Aonghas Macneacail the lost tower swimming in the clangorous mud between the roots of my two languages the one that is red sprinting swift lightnings through my veins and the other alien, indifferent, familiar wrapped around my skin like prison clothes, as i stretched out the fingers of my reason, my vision across wavefurrows to reach all the bays of the world to reach all the shores of the world across broken shellmounds of syllables to reach the languages of the world though you should be but across a kyle1 a sharp blade lies between our words 72 THE EMLIT PROJECT let us hymn the tongue that stood sweet let us sing blunting to the sunderer 1 kyle: a narrow strait (Translation: the author) Maoilios Caimbeul 3.3.2000 In Mozambique terrible floods. A baby was born in a tree. We don’t know we’re living. We’re not living, perhaps, dry. From now on trees will scream at me when it rains. Feathers Falling Beginning to understand it isn’t enough to sing although the song is beautiful – that singing isn’t much good when there’s a gun to the brain and the fowler is a spar of the cage in which we whistle. Seeing the distant skies through magnanimous windows; crying for the heights. Hearing near and distant reports and then the messengers – feathers from far away falling from space. (Translations: the author) ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 73 Meg Bateman Elgol: Two Views I looked at the old post-card, the houses like a growth from the soil, the peaks towering above them, a sign of the majesty of God, before an amenity was made of the mountains, or a divide between work and play, between the sacred and the secular… and I passed the picture to the old man. “Does it make you sad, Lachie?” I asked as he scrutinized it in silence. “Sad? Bah! Not at all! I couldn’t place her for a moment,” and he pointed to a cow in the foreground. “That’s the Yellow Lady, the Red Lady’s second calf – I’d know any cow, you see, that belonged here in my lifetime.” (Translation: the author) 74 THE EMLIT PROJECT Cymraeg / Welsh is a Celtic language closely related to Cornish and Breton. Its precursor, Brythonic, was once spoken throughout Britain. However, the incursions of the Romans and later of Angles, Saxons, Vikings and others resulted in its survival only in the western peninsula which came to be known to the English as Wales. Today it is spoken by 576,000 of the 2.9m people in Wales, and by others where Welsh-speaking people have settled, including Patagonia. The middle ages saw a great flowering of Welsh literature, but one of the key texts in maintaining the language has been the 1588 translation of the Bible. Welsh was suppressed for four centuries, but in the second half of the twentieth century vigorous policies to secure its survival have been implemented, with some success. The 2001 census reveals the first rise in the number of Welsh speakers, halting the steady decline from about a million in 1900. Now 21% of the population of Wales define themselves as speaking at least some Welsh, of whom 16% claim to understand, speak, read and write the language. The highest proportion of population is in Gwynedd (69%), and three other areas show over 50% (Isle of Anglesey, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire). More alarmingly these Welsh-speaking heartlands of north west and west Wales show an overall decline in speakers of up to 7% since 1991, and the new figure for Wales of a 2% rise probably masks an overall decline in those using Welsh as their first language. However, the increasing demand for Welsh medium education in the urban communities of south Wales is welcomed. One of the facts to emerge from the report The State of the Welsh Language 2000 is a widespread positive attitude. The use of the language in many cultural contexts, including literature, is clearly a key growth point. A bard is crowned every year at the National Eisteddfod. Twm Morys One Cold Morning One cold morning, in a fragile lace Of his breath and mine, We went to see the miracle of the sea, Like a storybook1 opening. The golden child smiled: In the brushwood and the branches Were the tiny bones2 of spring, And a constant cry from the lambing field. But there was ice in the foam, And I could see the far-away places Of his storybook opening, As he kept gazing at the sea. 1 In the Welsh the word is mabinogi which means “story of events or feats of youth.” It is used for the collection of ancient Welsh legends, about Pryderi and Rhiannon and Brân, first written down in the middle ages. 2 To be “nurturing tiny bones” is a Welsh expression meaning that a girl is pregnant. ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 75 On Hearing an Englishman Speak1 He asked the company whether anyone knew Of a gap to look quickly At the house he was to buy: Hill of the Gold? The yellow field was in the clouds. And yellow, yellow, between the clouds, The green grass rusted over its acres. They remembered fieldfuls falling, A man’s skin yellow as apples. And they closed their narrow, monoglot hearts, Half-spat, stared, and turned away, Sang badly for a long time, decided They could forget about the bastard stranger2… When the language is at the end of the headlands, Where will they go, the gabblers of names, And at their lips the string of villages, And all of Wales a song in their mouths? A few days later, there was a couple tidying the old house, And then they changed its name: Where the gold coloured hill and doorstep, They could see nothing through the gap but bracken. 1 R. S. Thomas, a Welsh poet who wrote in English, has a poem entitled “On Hearing a Welshman Speak.” 2 The Welsh word anghyfiaith means “stranger,” but in a particular sense. In every day usage it means “non-Welsh-speaking, English.” 76 THE EMLIT PROJECT To My Translator Now you’ve received me, doctor, With my brain and my insides Removed, with no more blood Or breath, in ice, You can go ahead And operate without nausea. Perform a tidy transplant Of yourself into the hole. And when the needlework is done, Nobody will see a trace of your hand. Then you can make up A name for me. (Translations: the author) ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 77 South Asian Languages in the UK Not surprisingly the languages of the Indian subcontinent’s north, its most populous region, are the most widely represented in the UK. However, all its languages are probably represented in Britain. Several of them are high on the world list of those with the biggest numbers of speakers, giving writers working in them in the UK potentially huge readerships. Ancestral languages tend to remain particularly significant as markers of identity to people of South Asian origin in Britain, many of whom are sensitive to the political status of their language historically. Hindi, the most widely spoken language of India with 275m speakers, became the focus for anti- colonial politics in India from the start of the twentieth century and was chosen at independence in 1947 as the national language, but since it was understood by only a third of the population, English was also soon adopted as an official language. Urdu is very similar to Hindi but uses an Arabic script, and is particularly associated with Islam. After partition it was designated the only state language of Pakistan, thus marginalizing the Bengali spoken by the 120m people of East Pakistan. The status of Bengali / Bangla played a major part in the politics of secession there, leading to the establishment in 1971 of independent Bangladesh.